Dave Kurlan is a top-rated speaker, best-selling author, sales thought leader and highly regarded sales development expert.
There is a great post written by a guest blogger over at the Inside Sales Blog. This post should be provided to salespeople in all companies that employ product managers who, despite the many ways they are utilized, cannot be confused with sales managers. Those of you who employ product managers might also want to take heed as this guy gets it and is quite frustrated by the salespeople who rely on him to do their jobs.
This could have been written by other people with other titles too. Salespeople tend to use Account Engineers, Application Engineers, Product Specialists, Technicians, Manufacturer Sales Engineers and other technically inclined people this way too.
There is a time and a place for others to become involved in the sales process. They key is for your salespeople to use them wisely, get the call set up where the expert's presence can be used as leverage, and do that consistently.
(c) Copyright 2008 Dave Kurlan